The History Book

My Personal views on Academic History and Research

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: General Views
• Date: 2015/05/22

After a career in the IT industry, I took redundancy/early retirement and started a full-time degree in my lifetime interest of Military History. I was surprised at the low level of understanding of how Information Technology can aid the understanding and exploration of the subject. The whole of the academic world seems stuck using 19^th century information technology in a 21^st century world. New ways to present and understand history through the use of modern technology is viewed with deep suspicion. The forefront of technology is considered the word-processor which is after all really just an upgrade of the 19^th century typewriter.

The use of the Web for research is coincided very much a no-no. This is worrying as the Web was invented to aid the publishing of academic research papers. The first web servers where at CERN near Geneva. The World Wide Web has developed and blossomed since then, however within the world of the professional historian the democratization of information, such as wikipedia and its susceptibility to inaccurate postings, has branded the internet in particular and information technology in general as unreliable. The reason this site exists is to explore how IT can support an exploration of History with an academically acceptable level of rigour.

I attended to a Conference on the Battle of the Atlantic. It was held in Liverpool to coincide with the 70th anniversary celebrations. Hosted by my old professor Eric Grove it lasted two days with some 28 speakers most professional academic historians. One theme that arose several times was the persistence of various myths that are held by the public which are simply wrong or at best gross exaggerations, and this got me thinking about this blog.

The Moon as ’The Truth’

• Author: Mike Parsons
• Catergory: General Views
• Date: 2015/05/22

I had the central idea for this article and wrote the core of it some years ago and have been developing the idea ever since. I find the idea useful when reading or listening to someone I disagree with, essentially it uses the physical moon as an analogy for the ’Truth’ and how different viewpoints while not necessarily changing my own position on an issue can provide a richer understanding of it.

All this may sound a bit meta-physical but my recent sojourn into academia has highlighted the variety of viewpoints on any subject. At University I took a module on Contemporary Security Studies. In Contemporary Security Studies, ’Truth’ is a even more ephemeral subject than in post-modernist history. Take for example, Terrorism versus Freedom-fighters, Weapons of Mass Destruction versus legitimate defences, one can see how the same issue can have different ’truths’ for different people. After some initial subject reading, this article is essentially written as a rant and to formalise my own thoughts.